Editorial: Time to let a hospital go

When a hospital is slated to shut, it’s treated like a death in the family by employee unions, community members and local politicians. They enter the first two stages of grief. First, denial: They insist the facts are untrue—there are not hundreds of empty beds, millions of dollars being lost or an industry evolution shifting services away from hospitals. Then, anger: They do a lot of yelling.

This familiar drama is again playing out in Brooklyn. The State University of New York board of trustees has voted to close Long Island College Hospital less than two years after its acquisition by SUNY Downstate Medical Center, a teaching hospital in the borough.

That deal was a fiscal disaster, as predictions of efficiencies and new revenue failed to materialize. There was little synergy between the two medical centers. An expectation that loads of patients would migrate to LICH from high-cost SUNY Downstate did not come to fruition, perhaps because there weren’t lots of patients at Downstate in the first place. And well-off, privately insured residents of brownstone Brooklyn continued to use Manhattan hospitals. Why anyone thought LICH would suddenly become appealing to them is baffling.

It is true that the hospital brings people and money into the neighborhood, and that adjacent businesses will take a hit if it closes. But the point of hospitals is to provide health care, not jobs, and there are better ways to boost commerce. In fact, the Council of Economic Advisers has found that slowing the growth of health care spending would increase gross domestic product. Savings on medical care would be put to better use in other parts of the economy.

Not only are hospitals poor vehicles for economic development, they often are not ideal for delivering health care. The industry is moving away from hospital-based care, which can expose patients to overtreatment and infection, toward clinic-based care, which is preventive and less costly.

It’s time to stop throwing good money after bad. The state should entertain proposals to repurpose LICH. Closing it will help the other Brooklyn hospitals with shaky balance sheets.

The public and its elected representatives typically equate the closing of a hospital with a loss of health care, but many services can be better delivered in other settings. If all of Brooklyn’s struggling hospitals remain open, red ink will overwhelm them. That wouldn’t be good for the borough’s economy or its patients.

The state should move forward with its plan so those who are grieving can advance to the final stage: acceptance.

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